DESCRIPTION: This fMRI project focuses on the neuroanatomical bases of social communication deficits in autism. The investigators current studies suggest that fundamental impairments in processing sensory information relevant to social cognition produce deficits in a common, higher level neuroanatomic network that may contribute to behavioral phenotype in autism. In the current application, they will focus on three fundamental aspects of information processing that may give rise to modality specific deficits in social cognition. These are: 1) imitation; 2) joint attention; and 3) referencing. These fMRI studies will determine whether there are underlying deficits in some basic neural response properties that affect primary skills necessary for social communication, namely, referencing and joint attention, using responses to human face perception as a model.